1. Field
Exemplary embodiments of the present invention relate to a system and method for retrieving an application, selecting, and executing an application suitable for tag information read from a near field communication (NFC) tag in an NFC terminal.
2. Discussion of the Background
Near field communication (NFC) is a short range technique for communication, and may utilize radio frequency identification (RFID). Further NFC may allow the transmission of data between terminals using a non-contact NFC module using a frequency band of 13.56 MHz at a distance such as 10 cm.
Terminals, such as a smart phone or tablet, have been implemented with an NFC module mounted on or in the device. Applications using NFC technology also have been implemented.
FIG. 1 is a flowchart illustrating a method for executing an application according to the prior art.
First, a user of a NFC terminal executes an available application (S10), and tag information is read from the NFC tag using a NFC reader (S12).
Then, it is determined whether the tag information read in operation S12 is available in the application executed by the terminal in operation S10 (S14), and if so, an associated operation is performed using the tag information (S16). If no tag information is available, the operation terminates.
Thus, an application is executed before tag information is read.
FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a method for executing an application according to the prior art.
First, an NFC terminal reads tag information from an NFC tag (S20), analyzes the read tag information (S22), filters an available application list based on supported technology information obtained by analyzing the tag information (S24), and filters the application list filtered in operation S24, based on Type Name Format (TNF) information obtained by analyzing the tag information (S26).
Thereafter, it is determined whether a basic application, which may have been set by a terminal user, is present (S28), and if the basic application is present, a determination is made as to whether the tag information read in operation S20 is available in the basic application (S30). If the tag information is available, the basic application is executed and an associated operation using the tag information is performed (S32). If the tag information is not available, the operation terminates.
If it is determined that the basic application is not present in operation 28, the available application list filtered in operations S24 and S26 may be displayed to the terminal user (S34).
Thereafter, the terminal user may select an application from the displayed application list (S36), and a determination of whether the tag information read in Operation 20 is available in the application selected by the terminal user is performed (S30). If the tag information is available, the application selected by the terminal user is executed, and may perform an associated operation using the tag information. If the tag information not available, the operation terminates.
As described above, in the related art, an operation is performed using an application set as the basic application. Alternatively, if the number of filtered applications is one or more, an application is selected by a terminal user to perform an operation. However, the basic application or the application selected may not recognize the tag information, and thus may not perform the operation.